Two Are Better Than One
by mermaid2bseeker
Summary: Harper and his 'genius' are at it again.
1. Chapter 1

Two Are Better Than One  
By mermaid2bseeker

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A/N: This possibly-one-shot cookie takes place around the first/second season.

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"It's alive! ALIVE!" Seamus Harper came running out of his machine shop, "Behold: I have brought life to a machine, again." He laughed maniacally while doing a cute little dance.  
  
Andromeda's holoimage appeared in front of him. "Before I suffer the unwelcomed consequences, tell me: What exactly have you done this time?"  
  
"We don't have to worry about getting killed, ever again." Harper could barely contain his excitement.  
  
"What are you talking about?"  
  
"Look." Harper motioned to the entrance to the machine shop.  
  
Andromeda stared out into space for a second, obviously scanning the room with her internal sensors. "Does Dylan know about this?"  
  
His face fell. "He will as soon as I tell him."  
  
Andromeda rolled her eyes, then disappeared.  
  
Harper started his little dance up again and made his way back into the shop.  
  
-----  
In his office, Dylan was reading off of transparent sheets of data when the andromeda holoimage appeared in front of his desk.  
  
"What's up?" he asked her.  
  
"I just thought you would want to know what Harper is doing right now."  
  
Dylan gave an exasperated sigh. "What is it?"  
  
"He's building decoy avatars of the main crew."  
  
"What?"  
  
"One each of you, Beka, Trance, Tyr, himself, as well as a copy of my avatar."  
  
"I don't believe it." He put his head in his hands. A moment later he popped his head back up as though he realized something. "Are they all connected to the ship?"  
  
"Not all of them."  
  
"Which one is connected?"  
  
"Yours."  
  
Dylan just nodded his head repeatedly to himself. "I need to have a talk with him again." He got up and walked toward the door. Andromeda turned around and looked at him, "He's more trouble than he's worth, you know," she said.  
  
"Yeeeaahhh, well, whatever," he said as he continued walking.  
  
Andromeda shook her head and disappered.  
  
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The door to the machine shop slid open. Harper looked back to it, and hurried to place a sheet over one of the avatars lying on a table. "Oh, hey boss."  
  
Dylan through the doorway. "So everything okay in here?" he loved baiting Harper into hanging himself.  
  
"Yeah, absolutely."  
  
"Because, Andromeda noticed some…"  
  
"She told you, didn't she?" he cut Dylan off.  
  
"…strange energy readings coming from here," Dylan finished his sentence. "Tell me what?"  
  
Harper searched for an answer. "That nothing was going on in here?" he said nervously.  
  
Dylan gave him a little smirk that said 'I caught you.' "What's under the sheet?"  
  
"Oh, this," Harper turned to the sheet-covered item. "Nothing, really. Just a little something I'm working on, you know." He was really starting to feel how hot it was in the room.  
  
"Uh huh." Dylan walked over to the object. "Then you won't mind me looking under this, will you?"  
  
"No?"  
  
"Good." He withdrew the sheet from the table and revealed… "Beka?" he said uncertainly, for the avatar had Beka's face, but the hair color was different; it was brown.  
  
"Sorta." Harper gave a nervous laugh. "Funny thing, really."  
  
"Really?"  
  
"Yeah." Harper figured if he talked real fast he wouldn't get in trouble. "I realized that if the avatars looked exactly like the crew, there might be confusion. So I altered each one a little, so that the copies wouldn't look exactly like the people. Funny? Huh?" he gave a nervous laugh.  
  
"Funny." Dylan lowered the sheet. "Just out of curiosity what alterations did you make to each avatar?"  
  
"Well, uh." He counted off on his fingers. "There's Beka's brown hair, Trance's tail-lessness and purplelessness, Tyr's afro…"  
  
"Afro?"  
  
"I couldn't think of anything else to do to him. Then there's, uh, my long hair and lack of neck port, and Rommie's short-cropped blue-ish hair, you know the way she used to have it."  
  
"You left someone out."  
  
"Who?"  
  
"Me."  
  
"Oh, you. Yeah, um, I decided to have you choose your own alterations."  
  
"Right." Dylan walked to the door, then turned and said, "Have you considered what some of the crew will do to you if you told them about making avatars of them?" he then left the room.  
  
"No." Harper gave a tiny, little whimper.

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A/N:  
Maybe more chapters to come. I don't know yet. Athough your reviews will help me decide whether I should write more or not.


	2. Chapter 2

Two Are Better Than One  
By mermaid2bseeker  
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A/N:  
Your reviews have let me know that at least one person is reading this fic. Although it's going to take a lot more reviews to make me want to continue this story. So write those reviews, it's easy. Scroll to the bottom of the web-page, click the 'go' button next to 'submit review,' then, just write how you liked/hated the chapter. It's so easy!  
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Chapter 2

Beka Valentine stormed through the halls of the Andromeda Ascendant furiously. Of all the nerve, Harper had to go and make an robot of her. When she got done with him, there would be nothing left to recognize. She walked into the machine shop and was surprised at what she saw.

"Trance?" she asked the person standing in the room. "What happened to you?" The person in front of her looked like a human Trance Gemini. The face was the same, as was the hair, but this person was lacking a tail as well as the purple skin tone. "Trance?" the avatar said giddily, "I'm not Trance."

"Then who are you?"

"I'm Gemini."

"Gemini?" the avatar nodded happily. Beka began walking around the shop. "HARPER!" she called out. "WHERE ARE YOU? YOU LITTLE EGOTISTICAL MIDGET."

Harper slowly walked out from behind a stack of crates. Beka had to take a second look at him to see that he was, in fact, not the real Harper. "Am I a genius? Or am I a genius?" he said triumphantly.

"If you think you're fooling me, you're not." Beka had a pissed-off/annoyed look on her face. "Where's the real Harper?"

"Harper's hiding," Gemini said cheerfully, as she skipped to where they were.

"Smart, isn't he?"

"HARPER!" Tyr called out as he strode into the room. "Where are you, you little piece of ..." He stopped when he saw Beka standing with a copy of Trance.

"Harper's not here," Gemini said with a huge smile.

"Than what's he?" Tyr said as he spotted Harper.

"I'm Seamus," the Harper-avatar said.

"Ah. I guess I'll just tear you apart until the real Harper gets here." He began to walk menacingly towards Seamus but stopped when a muffled sneeze echoed through the walls.

Beka smiled, picked up a long metallic tool, walked under a ceiling service panel and rammed the panel hard with the tool. A muffled 'ow' came from it, which she proceeded to open. A person tumbled out and onto the floor.

"Hello Harper," Beka said as the person stood up and dusted himself off.

"Hi," Harper said nervously. "What are you doing down here?"

"Looking for you so that I can kill you," Tyr answered.

"Hey, hey, hey, hey." Harper backed away. "Why would you want to kill me? What did I do?"

Tyr walked closer to him. "Not only did you create a machine of me without asking, but you gave it an....an..." Tyr seemed to grow red in the face, "an afro!?"

Beka laughed a little.

"Oh, I'm glad you think this is funny," Harper said sarcastically, "but I'm about to be killed over here."

"Hey," she replied, "if you had given me an afro, I'd want to kill you too."

"Thanks." He backed away again. "But think of all the good advantages of an avatar of yourself running around," he said nervously to Tyr, who continued to walk closer to him.

"Name one."

"Uh, well. There's uh...double the manpower, and uh...who better than yourself to train with?" Harper was now backed up against the wall.

Tyr stopped walking. "If you don't remove that...that hairstyle," he spat the word out, "then I will train with your head! Do you understand me?"

"100 percent, no room for error, understood."

Tyr turned away, and Harper let out a sigh of relief. But then Tyr did a fast turn-around and growled at him.

"Ahhhh!" Harper stumbled back a little.

Laughter could be heard as Tyr walked out of the room.

"Ow. Ow. Ow." Beka squeezed Harper's arm.

"Show me the avatar that looks like me," she said to him.

"Sure, no problem." He led her out the machine shop, with Gemini and Seamus following them. They walked through the corridor until they came to one of the crew quarters.

When Beka walked into the room, she felt her jaw drop. At first it looked like Dylan was playing basketball with two intruders but in fact they were all avatars.

"What did you do to my hair?" Beka asked as she recognized herself.

"Nothing really." Harper squirmed slightly. "I just changed her hair color, you know. So she would look different than you."

"You made me a brunette!"  
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A/N:  
More reviews please, or else I will not even bother thinking about writing another chapter. I swamped as it is: three in-progress stories, schoolwork, chores, extracurricular activities, whine, whine, whine, complain, complain. Please check out my bio page for other things I've written. Please, pretty please, with a cherry on top.


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